An ex-bull rider, back in the mechanical saddle

Arnold Valenzuela gripped the rusty handle on the saddle with his right hand and slowly raised his left, signaling he was ready to ride.

He flashed a quick smile under his thick black mustache to his daughters in the crowd, who captured the moment on Snapchat.

More than 30 years earlier, Valenzuela had ridden some of the most menacing bulls ever to live. He was living in Guatemala, a fresh-faced twentysomething feeding on adrenaline and the danger of an eight-second ride. Each one left him bruised and battered, and there were times he didn't know whether he'd ride again.

He retired after moving to the U.S. and raised a family.

On Wednesday night at Rodeo Houston, however, a new foe called him briefly out of retirement.

A brown-and-white mechanical bull.

No problem for someone like Valenzuela, right?

That's what he thought, too.

The hardest eight seconds were the time it took him to climb clumsily onto the bull – to the backdrop of his daughters' laughter.

Muscle memory was now an old ally for the grizzled and out-of-shape rider.

The thing bucked forward and jerked Valenzuela backward. His smiles disappeared as the bull's operator began to increase the pace of the frequency of the bucks.

For more than 30 seconds, Valenzuela recaptured his youth under the bright carnival lights and cheers of the crowd.

Then, with one quick swivel to the left, Valenzuela was thrown head-first onto the padded arena.

He took a few seconds to stand, but was embraced by his daughters, impressed by their dad's ride and the sizable crowd that watched his performance.

"It brought back a lot of memories," he said. "I miss it, but the rodeo is for young guys. Mechanical bulls are, too."

John D. Harden is a data and breaking news reporter for the Houston Chronicle.

He joined the Chronicle in spring 2014.

In 2017, National Press Foundation honored the Houston Chronicle for it's series Chemical Breakdown. The judges praised the application John helped code, which was central to the series. The application allowed readers to look up chemical facilities with a "potential for harm" that exist in their backyards.